


One Thing Left

by Ancalime1



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, So much blushing, Some angst, corny space lesbians yay, i've officially lost control of my life, no seriously this is the epitome of corniness, zero-gravity cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 05:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10430493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancalime1/pseuds/Ancalime1
Summary: Kairi and Olette have been on the ground for too long.Companion piece to "Warm Like the Sun"





	

**Author's Note:**

> **[Currently undergoing revisions]** So I’m not really into electronic music or anything, but I found a song that kind of reminds me of this fic. It’s called “Fading” by Vallis Alps, and I’d definitely recommend a listen or two. That’s all. :)

They spent what had felt like hours just staring out the viewport of the ship, entranced by the sinking green-blue glow of Olette’s home planet and the field of stars that surrounded it.

The two girls lay nestled atop the bench, holding each other close and losing themselves in the starlight. Every so often their lips would brush against each other, and their cheeks would turn rosy and warm with delight. Then they’d attempt to pull even closer to each other, when in actuality there was no longer any space left between them.

A small feeling of accomplishment began to well up in Kairi’s chest. Before now, she had never considered herself a romantic—not because she didn’t _want_ to be in a relationship, but because she had never been very skilled at initiating one. Over the years, she had found that intimacy was something with which she struggled. Getting close to someone meant becoming open to them: a disconcerting thought that, for her, conjured up sickening analogies to dissection. Opening up to someone meant complete vulnerability, like willingly placing oneself upon an operating table to be poked and probed and examined. It meant slicing herself open until all of her innards, her insecurities, her secrets, spilled out into a disgusting and indiscernible mess. Opening up was complicated, unpredictable, and alarmingly transparent—and it was, in short, an activity she had often declined to partake in. She much preferred to keep to herself, where everything was safe and secret, and hers.

And yet, time spent with Olette seemed to challenge this long-held concept. Being with Olette brought her a sense of relief, as if the weight of the worlds had temporarily been removed from her shoulders, and every commitment and duty of hers had miraculously vanished. _Like how it feels to be up in the stars,_ she thought contentedly, sliding her hand along Olette’s back, smoothing out an area where her orange top had wrinkled against the bench. _With her, I can just get away. I can be myself._ And really, she supposed that was the whole reason why she’d brought her here in the first place. The stars and Olette—two vastly different manifestations of what Kairi had wanted—joined together in a single moment to bring her a sense of freedom, both from her world and from herself.

A soft tap on her arm sent her hurtling out of her thoughts and into an upright position, bringing her face-to-face with an amused Olette. “Hey there, space cadet,” she teased. “Get enough beauty sleep?”

Kairi dug her fists in her eyes and stared at her blankly. “I was asleep?”

“Yeah,” replied Olette, thoughtfully chewing her lip. “But you started twitching a lot, so I woke you up. Looked like you were having a bad dream or something.”

“How long was I out?”

“‘Bout an hour.”

Kairi groaned and sank back into the bench, embarrassed. “Shit,” she muttered, dragging a palm across her forehead. “Sorry about that. I, uh, hope I didn’t scare you.”

Olette laughed warmly. “Only a little,” she said, twirling a strand of Kairi’s hair round her finger. “But trust me, I would’ve gotten you up sooner if I had thought something was wrong.”

“Nah. I have alarms for that,” murmured Kairi in return. She yawned and snuggled closer to Olette. “Besides, we’re in fairly peaceful space right now, so we can just relax.”

Olette made a face and gently shoved Kairi away. “That’s what we’ve _been_ doing, you big dork,” she said, giggling. “Besides, I need the bathroom. Where’s it at, again?”

Kairi mumbled in protest, but shifted her weight so that Olette could get up. “In the back, behind the cabin,” she grunted, stretching her arms out overhead. “Need me to show you?”

Olette rose and shook her head. “I got it,” she said, smiling and pressing a quick kiss to Kairi’s cheek. “Be back in a flash.”

Kairi watched her leave, watched her carefully pick her way through the cramped cockpit and towards the mid-deck. Already she missed the warmth of Olette’s body against hers—the brush of fingertips across her skin, the trace of lips against her own. A small sense of apprehension burned inside her, slowly twisting its way through her gut and chewing away at her insides. She’d felt this way before, of course—it was the same uneasiness that typically accompanied the start of every relationship, uneasiness that was magnified by her own ambivalence of getting close to another human being. Sure, everything may have been going smoothly at the moment, but there was still plenty of time for Kairi to screw up, plenty of time for a thousand things to go wrong.

She hastily shook thought away. “Get ahold of yourself,” she breathed, digging her fingernails into the bench as if to ground herself back into reality. But she could feel her pulse rising, her veins throbbing beneath her skin, her heart ticking like a timebomb. She clenched the fabric of the bench, trying to redirect her focus to the fibers of the cloth. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” she muttered, her voice shaking. “Just breathe in, breathe out.”

_Dammit._

She heaved a frustrated sighed and hoisted herself off of the bench, her anxiety having gotten the better of her yet again. She began to pace in circles around the cockpit, her fingers drumming wildly against the pockets of her jeans. _A thousand things could go wrong,_ a small voice echoed inside her brain. _A thousand things…_

She eventually decided that she couldn’t stand being alone any longer. Giving the radars a glance for good measure, she jammed her hands in her pockets and trudged out of the cockpit.

Olette let out a surprised squeak, having narrowly avoided crashing into Kairi on her way out. “Oh,” she said cheerfully. “Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”

“Not a problem,” replied Kairi, a little too quickly. She awkwardly scooted past the other girl and went to seal the cabin hatch, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Then, in a somewhat desperate attempt to appear casual, she leaned against one of the padded walls and gave Olette a nod. “So, uh, how’re you liking it so far?”

Olette raised an eyebrow at the act, but said nothing, much to Kairi’s relief. Instead, she simply smiled and wandered over to the row of windows and pressed her face against the glass. “I love it,” she said in a soft, dreamy voice that made Kairi’s heart melt. “It’s just so beautiful. So, so beautiful. I mean, just looking out this window makes me feel like…” she trailed off, casting a nervous glance at Kairi.

“Like what?”

Olette hesitated, her face flushing with color as if she were making a confession. “Like I can fly,” she said, voice quiet. “It makes me… wanna be out there, where the stars are.” A pause. “Er, but I suppose that’s asking too much,” she finished with a shaky laugh.

A sympathetic smile found its way across Kairi’s lips, and she gently wrapped her arms around Olette. “I know the feeling,” she said softly, giving the window a wistful look. “I’ve heard it’s incredible. I wish… I wish I could give it to you.”

Olette stiffened. “You’ve already given me enough,” she said, a hint of jealousy in her voice. “More than enough, really. Shit, the view from Twilight Town doesn’t have anything on this.”

“The view from Twilight Town is gorgeous,” corrected Kairi in a gentle voice, stroking the back of Olette’s head. “It’s just different, that’s all. They’re both beautiful in their own right.”

“Oh, please. You are such a hippie,” teased Olette, pulling away and giving her a light flick to the forehead.

“Maybe I am,” agreed Kairi, catching her by the hand and kissing it. “Or, maybe I just have an eye for beauty.”

“A hippie _and_ a romantic, then. Got it.”

Kairi grinned. “Only when I’m around you.”

Olette’s face flushed. “Oh, shut _up_ ,” she laughed, slinging a lazy arm round Kairi’s shoulder and pulling her close. “So, space cowgirl,” she murmured, leaning her head against Kairi’s. “What happens next?”

Kairi snorted at the epithet, but said nothing. Rather, she allowed her eyes to roam away from Olette and back to the window, where the stars glistened like suspended dewdrops. “ _I wanna be out there, where the stars are,”_ she heard Olette whisper in the back of her mind. _“I know,”_ she said in return. “ _I wish I could give it to you.”_

She closed her eyes. The stars and Olette: two vastly different entities, and yet somehow entirely the same. The two things that mattered more than anything to her, united by a series of chance events and hard choices.

_I want to give her the stars._

The thought was simple, ambiguous, and utterly unfeasible. But it was enough to inspire her.

“Hey. You still with me?”

Kairi blinked. Olette was gazing at her expectantly, mouth a thin line, green eyes flickering with concern. “Uh, yeah,” breathed Kairi, drawing a hand behind her head. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Something’s on your mind,” said Olette, unconvinced.

“Yeah, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?”

Olette huffed and planted her hands on her hips. “Don’t be a wiseass,” she scolded, giving Kairi a critical look. “C’mon, I can tell something’s bothering you.”

Kairi shook her head and gave her a reassuring smile. “Nah. Just thinkin’,” she said, voice quiet. She gave the window another thoughtful glance and idly ran a hand through her hair. “It’s just… I think you may have given me an idea, that’s all.”

Olette arched an eyebrow. “Should I be concerned?”

“Oh, gimme a break,” laughed Kairi. She gently shrugged Olette’s arm from off her shoulder, and ambled towards the window. “You… said you wanted to be out there, yeah?”

Olette blushed. “I—that was just wishful thinking,” she sputtered, her eyes dropping to the floor. “Just stupid, wishful thinking. Look, forget I said that, ‘kay?”

Kairi turned and gave her a serious look. “I don’t think it’s stupid,” she said, surprised by the earnesty of her own voice. “I feel the same way, all the time.” She paused, simultaneously allowing herself to collect her thoughts and to breathe. “I can’t take you out there,” she continued, gesturing at the window. “I don’t have the equipment. But there’s something else that I can do, something that’ll make it feel like we’re really out there.”

“Seriously Kairi, I’m already impressed,” insisted Olette. “Whatever it is, you don’t have to do it for me.”

Kairi smiled at her, taking the other girl’s hand and squeezing it gently. “Then I’ll do it for the both of us,” she said, voice low and reassuring. She released her hand and began to wander off the mid-deck, away from Olette. “Sit tight till I get back, okay?”

Olette folded her arms, trying everything in her power to appear cool and aloof. “You’re ridiculous,” she muttered. “What exactly are you trying to do, anyways?”

Kairi smiled a bit to herself. “You’ll know it when you feel it,” she called. Carefully, she made her way down through the narrow passage that led to the cockpit. She began to scan the dashboard for the gravity controls, a small set of switches that would allow her to temporarily disable the artificial gravity. And all the while her heart was pounding, thrumming frantically against her ribcage like a butterfly caught in a bell jar. The feeling of vulnerability was returning, the sense that some intimate secret of hers was about to splinter off of her being and make its way to the surface and towards Olette. It was the same feeling that she had experienced in every relationship, the dangers of opening up to another human being. But Olette was different. She’d already opened up plenty to her—at least by her standards. She’d taken her, an outsider, into her innermost sanctuary. _Not an outsider,_ she corrected herself. _A friend._

The gravity switches lay at the end of the dashboard, tucked away in a corner where they wouldn’t be bumped into and activated by accident. She’d been told time and time again that these were only to be used in emergency situations, and each time she’d disregard this advice without ever really knowing why. There was something thrilling about being suspended in zero-g, a feeling that she had often attributed to her own childishness and penchant for novelty. Never before had she suspected there to be some kind of underlying reason, some hidden psychological grounds that made weightlessness so appealing. But it became clear to her just then as she stood beside the dash, her hand hovering just above the switches: _I don’t need gravity to hold me down,_ she thought. _I do that just fine on my own._

She had no idea how long she had been holding her breath, but when she finally exhaled, it felt like every insecurity, every inhibition she had ever had was slowly draining out of her. Smiling, because she had never felt so free before in her life, she closed her eyes and deactivated the gravity fields.

In an instant, her feet had left the ground, and she had begun to drift. A familiar sense of giddiness glowed within her chest as she rose into the air, the sudden weightlessness causing her to feel wonderfully light.

For a brief moment it was just her, floating serenely before the viewport, a sparkling dome of starlight stretching above her into infinity. But an insistent _“Kairiiiiiiiiii!”_ had jolted her back to reality, and she couldn't help but grin a bit to herself at the sound. Carefully, she picked her way out of the cockpit and back to the mid-deck, where Olette was waiting for her.

She found her hovering confusedly beside one of the windows, wide-eyed and digging her nails into the wall for support. “What did you _do_?” she demanded, her breath shaky with surprise.

Kairi chuckled. “Tinkered with the gravity fields a bit,” she said, allowing herself to float beside her. She twirled dramatically and flourished a hand towards Olette, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Care for a dance in the starlight, m’lady?”

The makings of a grin began to spread across Olette’s face, but she caught herself just in time and gave Kairi a reproachful look. “You… broke your artificial gravity? On _purpose?_ ”

The unexpected reaction caused Kairi’s face to flush with color, and she threw up her hands in defense. “Now hold on a sec,” she said, attempting to look serious while bobbing against the wall. “I didn’t break it… just disabled it, is all. Trust me, I’ve done this like a million times before.”

Olette raised an eyebrow. “You’ve busted your artificial gravity a million times? What’s the point of even having it, then?”

Kairi gaped at her. “W-well, for health reasons, obviously,” she stammered, trying desperately to regain her composure. “And, uh, convenience. And again, I _disabled_ it. It’s not busted.”

“Huh. Fair enough,” said Olette, the corners of her mouth curving into a smirk. She kicked off the wall with surprising ease and began to float smugly beside Kairi. “Feels like I’m learning a lot about you today.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like, your favorite pastimes include seducing other girls and screwing around with your ship’s artificial gravity. Because why the hell not.”

Kairi gave her playful shove, unintentionally causing the other girl to comically spiral away from her and into the wall. “Er, sorry,” she said, trying to suppress a chuckle. “Forgot about the, uh…” she gestured vaguely around her. “... _This_. Here, let me help—”

Olette gave her a dismissive wave. “I’ve got it,” she said coolly, digging her palms into the wall and reorienting herself towards Kairi.

“I don’t seduce people, by the way,” said Kairi, a tinge of red coloring her face. “You know I don’t.”

“Yeah, I know,” laughed Olette. “You’re too awkward.”

Kairi grinned. “Gee, thanks.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, though,” said Olette contentedly, allowing herself to drift beside Kairi once more. "I mean, who cares if you’re awkward? You’re, like, the sweetest, most thoughtful person I’ve ever met.”

Kairi’s cheeks flushed. “Oh… you, uh, really think so?”

“Of course I think so, silly.” Olette reached out and clasped Kairi’s hands, as if she were about to dance with her. “What, would I lie to you?”

It was a simple enough question, and yet Kairi felt her heart immediately jump into her throat. “No,” she said lamely, distracted by Olette’s intense green gaze, and the pair of hands curling against her body and pulling her close. “No, I guess not.”

“Wow. Very reassuring,” said Olette with a smirk. Then, leaning towards her, she said in a soft voice, “You were right, you know.”

“About what?”

Olette smiled. “About this,” she murmured, her voice low and warm. “It just feels so good to let everything go, you know? To be weightless, with you.  I think… I think I needed this.”

Kairi beamed at her, the swell of accomplishment returning inside her chest. “Oh. I was hoping you’d like it,” she said, a bit more timidly than she had intended.

“I do,” agreed Olette, her voice light and breathy. “It’s amazing. I feel amazing.” She gestured to the rest of the chamber. “Do—do you mind if I…?”

“Oh. Go for it,” said Kairi, giving her an encouraging smile.

Olette grinned in response and let go of Kairi’s hands, and within seconds she had begun to float away again. She stretched her arms out wide in bliss, her hair billowing out behind her like a stream of ribbons, and she was _beautiful_ , so suffocatingly beautiful. She was the sun at the center of Kairi’s system, and Kairi couldn’t help but feel attracted to her. It was like she was trapped in her orbit, in her gravity, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. _I need her,_ she decided, as Olette’s tranquil form drifted above her. _I need to be with her._

Carefully, she pushed herself off the wall behind her and floated towards Olette, catching her in her arms and holding her tight. Olette grinned, but then let out a surprised squeak as they briefly bounced against the padded wall, inertia having lost none of its potency in zero-g.

“Shit,” Kairi gasped, grappling at the wall to steady themselves. She stared at Olette, mortified. “ _Shit!_ Are… are you okay? I didn’t mean to—”

“I’m fine, you big dork,” cut in Olette, laughing. “Seriously, you need to relax.”

Embarrassed, Kairi groaned and buried her face in the crook of Olette’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I, uh, didn’t really think that through.”

Olette let out an amused grunt and pulled her close, stroking Kairi’s back with a rhythmic intensity that both soothed her and made her shiver. “Quit being so hard on yourself,” she chided. “It’s not your fault you’ve never cuddled with someone in zero-g before.”

“What, and you have?”

“Nah,” murmured Olette, her breath warm against Kairi’s neck. “Never had the pleasure. Been stuck on the ground too long, you know?”

A soft smile began to make its way across Kairi’s face. “I know.” She twined her legs around Olette’s to keep them from drifting apart, and then planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. “I know,” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. “We both were.”

“Yeah,” Olette agreed, a note of sympathy in her voice. “Just… in different ways, I guess.”

Kairi’s mouth curved into a thoughtful frown, but she said nothing. She found that she didn’t need to—Olette was, after all, a remarkably perceptive girl. There was no need to confess her insecurities, because Olette had undoubtedly read them already.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Yeah. But… things are different, now. As long as we have each other, we can fly.”

Olette laughed, her voice low and warm. “Mm. Corny, but I like it,” she murmured, her lips brushing against Kairi’s.

A gentle heat pulsed between them, making Kairi feel light and warm and contentedly drowsy. _Only one thing left to do,_ she thought, curling against Olette’s soft and slender frame, her eyelids drooping.

“I love you,” she whispered, her heart skipping a beat as a pair of emerald eyes immediately settled onto her own. She drew in a sharp, shaky breath and continued,“I just wanted you to know that.”

A light flashed in Olette’s eyes—a flicker of electricity, a solar flare of green that made Kairi shiver. A smile crept across her lips, and she was beautiful, radiant, a star blazing with astral warmth. She was Kairi’s radiant and beloved Sun, and she would always be there to guide her through the lonely night and into the warmth of her embrace. _As long as we have each other, we can fly._

“Kairi,” she murmured at last, her voice soft and almost inaudible.

“Yeah?”

She sighed, and her her breath was like a stellar wind against Kairi’s skin.“I love you too,” she said, and she pressed her lips against Kairi’s and kissed her, and the crushing gravity inside Kairi’s head began to fade.

Together, they were the Sun and the Stars, two celestial beings shining with brilliant warmth. Together, they were flying—and as they flew, the entirety of the universe opened itself and welcomed them into its arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I only realized after the fact that Kairi could have just cast Zero Graviga and be done with it. Forgot that was even a spell, to be honest. 
> 
> Also, I've read through this fic like a thousand times -- but if there's like an awkward passage or anything that feels kind of funky, feel free to point it out. I'd love to hear your feedback. :)


End file.
